At 08:19 AM 5/24/98 -0400, you wrote:
>
>Back home from 10 days in Italy, very pretty and not too many train
>screw-ups, about half, a low %. No rain here, whereas a few hundred miles
>off there has apparently been deluge. Lawn is turning brown - I never
>water it, figure it's God's job and if it dies I can get rid of it (it
>never has). There is plenty of the steppe-lands dry gfrass-type weeds
>coming up all over. I think I am going to resort to weed killer because if
>it doesn't rain, I'll never be able to pull them out of this clay. The old
>pear tree has sent up a half dozen suckers, a sure sign of very dry
>weather. Last rain was about 3 weeks ago, for us in this wet Great Lakes
>region very dry indeed. yeah George it's a big pain watching people wash
>their cars.
>
>I'm moving pretty slowly this morning and haven't been out yet to see
>what's really what in the garden - overgrown and overrun by grass I can see
>from the window.
>
>Lucinda
>
Welcome back, Lucinda. When I saw news items about deadly landslides in
Italy, it sent me to the Atlas to see where you were in relation to them.
You were near Rome, as I recall. What's the etymology of Ostia? Is it as
in ostracism or oyster shell flinging? Best, Margaret